Amnesia & the Conservative American Commoner

By now the entire world knows that American voters have given Barack Obama a second mandate as President of the United States. Since the election a fortnight ago, news watchers have witnessed many American conservatives across the land in a state of extreme shock and awe over the results (with a solid dose of extreme anger thrown in for good measure). Just last week, in fact, Mitt Romney claimed that Obama won the election because he bribed college students, women, immigrants, and gays to get their vote.

I disagree with Romney’s "analysis." I disagree with the post-election analysis of any conservative who claims that the only reason Obama won was because of the support of people who are not the real Americans. They seem to have forgotten the real reasons as to why a majority of voters shunned the pro-corporate Republican ticket of Romney and Ryan.

Conservative commoners need reminding as to why Obama is still the President. I am going to try to cut through their amnesia to explain why Obama won despite the billions of dollars spent by many of the wealthiest Americans for anti-Obama attack ads. They should be given an answer as to why non-conservative people said “thanks but no thanks.”

Most Democratic voters simply did not agree with the Republican vision of gutting social programs, turning healthcare for seniors into a voucher system, and giving the wealthy even further tax cuts. 

For one thing, it has only been a year since the massive Occupy Wall Street movement made Americans hyper aware that the top 1% owned a grotesque and growing amount of wealth during this era of job layoffs and home foreclosures.

Conservatives should likely have considered that it was not the best time to promote the silver-spooned Romney, CEO of the ultra-predatory Bain Capital and a member of the 1%, as the Republican presidential candidate. As shown in that infamous video, spouting off to a room filled with other one per centers that almost half of the American population is filled with parasites who do not pay taxes and want the government to provide healthcare and housing was likely a major reason why Romney did not win the election. (By the way, I have to wonder how many of the "$50 grand platers" who listened to Mitt have their income in the banks of strange places like the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes. My sense is that this group is not very concerned about American civil society.) 

Conservatives likely forgot about Occupy, even though it was just a year ago, and this is perhaps partially why they nominated Romney as their candidate. What else has their collective amnesia caused them to forget?

Well, I think they forgot Romney’s disparaging remarks made in 2008 that Obama’s bail out of the auto industry would lead to the end of the American auto industry. This was offensive to working families as well as completely wrong.

Why can’t American conservatives who tried to blame Obama for the dire economic situation recall that the economy collapsed under the last Republican president, that George W Bush fellow? In fact, Bush Jr did the first massive bailout of the financial industry and left Obama to do the second one a few days after he took office. This was not long ago at all – why can’t conservatives remember these things?

I think they did not take into account that the candidate for Vice President, Paul Ryan, portrayed himself as a devout and pious Christian as well as a serious fan of the famous atheist Ayn Rand. They did not seem to remember that despite Rand’s libertarian ideology of getting the government out of the economic lives of citizens, she was quite happy to accept social security checks from the government. Such ridiculous hypocrisy does not play well with non-conservative voters. Nor should it play well with conservative commoners.

Conservatives must have forgotten that another one of Rand’s devotees, former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, pushed for deregulation of the financial industry which, in turn, led to the collapse of the American economy back in 2007. A strong case can be made that if one person is to blame for the economic calamity that occurred under Bush's watch, Greenspan is that person.

Speaking of the economic philosophy of Rand, Ryan, Greenspan and the Tea Partiers, the Congressional Research Service has found absolutely no evidence to support the corporate mantra that cutting taxes on rich people leads to a stronger economy. Conservatives from middle- and working-class backgrounds need to accept this as reality before their entire civil society is dismantled. (See http://graphics8.nytimes.com/news/business/0915taxesandeconomy.pdf)

Conservatives cannot seem to remember that when Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy during his first term, the economy actually took off and resulted in years of surplus budgets. What’s with that? Why can’t they remember? It was not that long ago.

Why do they forget that creating stronger healthcare programs (like Republican president Nixon did in the 1970s with Medicaid) does not lead to a communist state. Nor does regulating the financial industry lead to a communist takeover of the nation, as some recent pro-Republican ads suggested.

Some conservatives are claiming that a social safety net for the neediest Americans will lead to a government that controls all aspects of society. They claim this even though the US has had a social safety net ever since FDR enacted the New Deal back in the 1930s. Has the New Deal cost Americans their cherished freedoms? Hardly. So why have they forgotten this?

Why did they forget that Bush Jr also helped cause the economy to collapse because of those costly US-led invasions? Why can’t they recall Bush telling them that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he didn’t have any? (Well, Rumsfeld gave Saddam some biochemical weapons to use on the Kurds back in 1985, but apparently that was not the kind of WMD that Bush and Cheney were looking for.)

Why did conservatives recently try to portray Romney as the tough guy who would once again make America a feared nation across the planet when it was this very same man who back in 2007 said it was not worth trying to go after Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks? Did they forget?

Why do American conservatives forget that the last two summers were devastatingly hotter than in previous years? Ask any Texan about that. Why can they not remember the past to comprehend that climate change is really and truly happening?

Why do American conservatives forget that sometimes rape leads to pregnancy? (I will chalk this one up to the push for American schools to replace science courses with "intelligent" design.)

Back in 2007 and 2008, some religious conservatives claimed that if Obama became the President then the Pledge of Allegiance would be gone, that it would be the end of the Boy Scouts, that abortion would be accessible to anyone anytime, that all private guns would be seized, and that pornography would be on display at all gas stations. But Obama has been president for four years and none of these things came to be! So why did we hear more of these pathetic claims during the last campaign? Why can't conservatives remember that they tried this fear mongering last time to no avail?

What is keeping the typical American conservative from remembering any of these things? Is their collective amnesia merely a symptom of what John Kenneth Galbraith calls their “search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”?? This might explain the position of the wealthy patrons at Romney's fundraiser dinner in September. But it certainly does not really get at those conservatives who have trouble paying for the gas needed to run their vehicles.

It boggles the progressive mind as to why they would put all of their support behind a predatory capitalist like Mitt Romney and a hammer-the-working-class Tea Bagger like Paul Ryan?

Not very long ago, conservative pundit Ann Coulter stated emphatically that she wished the vote would be taken away from women so that the US would always have a Republican president. Is Coulter the one conservative who remembers something almost resembling a fact? That most American women eschew mean-spirited conservative agendas?

No, even the “devout & pious” Coulter suffers from amnesia - she recently tried to tell Americans that their military bombed Egypt under Obama’s directive. They didn’t bomb Egypt, of course, but we can forgive Coulter. After all, she is an avowed and proud American conservative and they all seem to be suffering from a major case of collective amnesia. 

For progressives, Obama is still the American President despite this amazingly widespread case of amnesia among conservatives.

But the actual popular vote was close. Yes, some conservatives are likely perturbed by the President's racial background. And to be sure, the billions spent on anti-Obama attack ads also must have been a factor in how close the vote actually was.

But there still must be millions of American commoners who legitimately believe that the Romney-Ryan ticket was somehow going to make life better for them.

The question that must be asked is this: What is it that leads these contemporary American conservatives to forget all of the things mentioned above?

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Note #1: I do not wish to imply that Canadian conservatives have better memories than their ideological counterparts in the US. I live in Saskatchewan, a province where conservatism is now so entrenched that it would seem people here have completely forgotten what Tommy Douglas and the CCF and NDP provincial governments did for them. But the memory of the Canadian conservative is for a future post.

Note #2: I think American conservatives would do well to push for more likeable media pundits for their movement. Let's consider the following list of famous American media people who want their voice to be seen as representing "true" conservatism: there is the aforementioned Anne Coulter, of course, but lest we forget others such as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Trump! Let's face it, there is not a baby or toddler in the land that wouldn't shriek in absolute abject terror if any of these conservatives were to approach them, even if they were offering the child's favourite candy. (Actually, many adults I know would behave similarly if any of these infamous conservatives were walking towards them.) I think it is past time for American conservatives to get some new people to speak for them on their TV and radio media sources, and hand these five angry people their walking papers.